It Ain't Sunday
by Dukes126plus
Summary: He’s standing there barefoot in the leaves, cummerbund and tie in one hand, jacket in the other, vest hanging open, suspenders loose and Luke doesn’t even want to start wondering where the smaller garments have gotten to. From Money to Burn.
1. It Ain't Sunday

Money to Burn was another one of those episodes I wound up writing two vignettes for. This first one takes place around the time the boys get into tuxedos. (Which, if you watch the episode carefully, takes place in a split second. We look at the boys from one side of the car and they are in blue and yellow. The camera angle changes to the other side, and we see them in tuxes. But for the sake of this vignette, we'll ignore that little slip up.)

* * *

"Luke." He's getting whined at. All his life that same voice, even if it supposedly changed a few years back, has nagged him from no more than two feet away (except when he was separated from it by a couple of continents, but there's no point in dwelling on that now). "I need help."

Of course Bo does. He's only been dressing himself for fifteen years or so now, and clothing can be tricky, what with its buttons and zippers, and these are all the left-handed kind. Then again, if Luke ignores him long enough, Bo'll remember that just because the zipper is on the left side doesn't mean he can't use his right hand to pull it up.

"Luke!" Stop dressing yourself and look at me. And what the hell, there's not going to be anything there that Luke hasn't seen a thousand times before. Soon as he gets his socks on, he'll give in and help the pathetic one. He waves his hand through the air in the universal signal for hold onto your hat, and stumbles around until he's got decent footwear on.

Shoot, it's a good thing Bo has no hat to hang onto. He's standing there barefoot in the leaves, cummerbund and tie in one hand, jacket in the other, vest hanging open, suspenders loose and Luke doesn't even want to start wondering where the smaller garments have gotten to.

"Bo." On a better day, one where they weren't trying to save their own necks from larceny charges, he'd laugh. Today he doesn't have that luxury. "You gotta be able to do a better job of dressing yourself than that." Then again, maybe Luke should be grateful. He has managed to get the pants on right.

"I can." Obviously. Look at the fine job he's done so far. "But there's just too many parts to this thing."

Luke takes pity on him. Dukes never have had a reason to be affording anything like a tuxedo affair. Seems like a quick hitch in the Marines might have taught Bo how to handle dress blues, but since there's no such thing as a one-week hitch, Luke has no interest in sending Bo off there.

"Give me that," Luke says, gesturing for the jacket. If Bo drops that sucker out here in the woods, they'll never get their deposit back, and that'll mean no seed corn _or_ grub, and four starving Dukes.

The seat of the hearse is about the only safe place to put the tailcoat, what with how dust-laden the car's hood is, so it gets laid there. Meanwhile Luke's already gesturing with his other hand for the tie and cummerbund. The tie goes with the jacket, and Luke's lesson begins.

"Tighten up them suspenders, Bo." It's encouraging when his cousin bends to the task, chin just about on his chest, and hair dangling down into his eyes. "Now put this on," Luke commands next, handing over the cummerbund.

"Put it on what?" Yeah, Luke should have known this was going too well.

"Bo, we ain't got time for games. We got to meet them federal agents at three." And there was still the little matter of getting hold of the money to begin with. Which could only come after they finished getting dressed and drove themselves out of these woods and off to the coffin factory.

Bo sighs, big dramatic kind that accompanies those moments when he's about to tell Jesse just how unreasonable his nasty older cousin is being. "I ain't playing games, Luke."

Fine. "Just hold still. And button your shirt." Simple enough instructions that lead to Luke slapping at Bo's hands. "Your shirt, not your vest."

"My shirt's already buttoned," Bo complains.

Luke fixes him with his best imitation of Jesse's behave-or-I'll-tan-your-hide expression. "All the way, Bo. To the neck."

"But it ain't Sunday," is the very logical complaint.

"Well pretend it is, and get buttoning." Whatever it takes to distract the man while Luke slides his arms around him. A silly little giggle lets him know that the distraction didn't work. He glowers up at the underside of his cousin's chin while he stuffs the tail end of cloth into the clip of the cummerbund.

"It tickles, is all," Bo explains. Right, it's got nothing to do with the way his big cousin is stooping down to hug his waist.

"Well, you're just lucky it's all done then. Now you can button your vest." And look there how the very top button on Bo's collar is still loose. Luke reaches up to do it for him, ignoring the sour look he gets for his trouble. "The tie ain't going to set right if you ain't buttoned all the way up."

"Yeah, the tie. Luke, I ain't never been any good at ties," Bo starts the excuse wagon rolling.

"Yes, you do got to wear it," Luke tries to preempt the inevitable.

"But I always feel like I'm gonna choke," and now that the wagon's gotten some momentum, there's going to be no stopping it.

"I promise to plug my ears if your choking gets too loud."

"I don't actually choke, I just—"

"Bo, spare me. You're wearing the tie." And that ought to settle that. Except it doesn't.

"I don't know how to tie it. Luke, it's true!" he adds before he can get laughed at or punched, whichever way Luke's confused body decides to go. "You know I ain't never had a real tie in my life."

Luke does know, and Bo's lying. Back when they were kids, before clip-ons, they both had church ties. Luke distinctly remembers Aunt Lavinia teaching them the sequence of twists and turns to get a proper knot.

"That was a long time ago, Luke." Well. Seems he doesn't even need to remind Bo that they grew up together and he knows better. Those long hands are already up in surrender. Must be the way Luke's looking at him; could be that his desire to utilize the hearse for its proper purpose is showing in his eyes. "I ain't done it since then and I don't remember how."

_Baby_, Luke thinks, but saying it out loud will only set them back a half hour while Bo pouts, then refuses to cooperate until Luke says he's sorry in six different languages. Which would be awfully hard since he only knows the one. Instead of saying what's on his mind, Luke snatches the tie off the car seat where he tossed it a few minutes ago.

"Turn around," he commands.

Bo just gives him that slack-jawed deer-in-the-headlights look.

"Around," Luke repeats, twirling the index finger of his free hand in the air. "I can only do this the one way, Bo. I ain't never had to put on another man's tie for him."

Bo's eyebrows come down like he's considering whether to be insulted, and time is ticking away while he makes up his mind. Luke winds up shoving at his shoulder until Bo's back is to him. At least while he's making up his tiny little mind, Luke can be getting him dressed. Maybe.

"Stoop down."

"What?" Like Luke didn't practically say it straight into his ear.

"You got to get shorter, Bo." Really, there was no good reason Bo ever had to get taller than him in the first place.

His cousin thinks _that's_ funny. Luke could remind Bo that he's not so big as he thinks, what with his inability to dress himself. Maybe later. After he's done trying to restrain himself from strangling the brat.

Or trying not to strangle himself. Bo's method of getting low enough consists of spreading his lags wide enough so Luke can loop his arms over those shoulders that are not only to high but strangely broad. To see what he's doing, Luke just about has to eat Bo's hair.

"That tickles, Luke," Bo giggles, tilting his head away and oblivious to the fact that it means his shoulders follow. Luke tightens his arms around him, holding him still, but has to untwist what he's already begun, and start over.

"Don't go moving, Bo," he warns. Gets another giggle in response, but at least his cousin manages to stay relatively still, chin down and trying to watch what Luke does. "You'll go cross-eyed that way," he warns. And that would be a disaster. There was that cross-eyed kid Luke knew back in elementary school who had to wear those coke-bottle-thick glasses that made his eyes bulge out like a fish. He doesn't want to picture his pretty cousin that way.

"No I won't," Bo assures him. "It's crooked," he gets informed. And if his cousin's not careful, it'll be awfully tight, too.

"Then fix it," Luke suggests, letting go. It's tied anyway. Might not be perfect, but it's better than Bo would have managed on his own. Bo doesn't move, so Luke slaps him on the rump. "Come on, stand up and fix it yourself."

To his credit, Bo manages to find his socks and shoes and get them on, then pull the jacket over his shoulders.

"How do I look?" he asks, turning to present himself to Luke.

Damn. Bo needs to wear a tuxedo more often. Luke makes a mental note to include formal wear into more of his schemes. That tie is still crooked, though. "Come here," he answers.

Reaches up to straighten his cousin's tie, then to fluff his blonde hair.

"You look good," Luke answers truthfully. Has every intention in the world of stepping back, and heading for the passenger side of the car, but he can't seem to get his hands out of Bo's hair.

He gets a grin of a response, and that's the end of it. Uses the hair to pull himself up (or Bo down) until their lips meet. Steps back out of it and turns to the car.

"For luck," he says over his shoulder. Bo giggles and follows him to the hearse.


	2. Under the Tarp

And this alternate take on _Money to Burn_ has to do with Cooter's line: what was y'all doing under the tarp?

* * *

Fun is fun, and Luke likes fun as much as the next guy (except that the next guy is usually Bo, and there's maybe no one he's ever met that's as indiscriminate about fun as Bo is) but not to the extent it can get him killed. Or wet. Bo thinks it's only water that's spraying in through the General's windows, but it's actually runoff from Razorback, probably contaminated with coal dust – and then there's the urine of young boys who still go up there for the sport of seeing the remnants of a strip mined mountain.

Only Bo would drive up a streambed in spring anyway, when the snowmelt's put enough water in there to stall an unsuspecting engine. The General's got some serious moves on him but he's not impervious to water any more than the Wicked Witch of the West was (and that right there stirs up memories of night upon night – might have been a whole month – with a warm, shaking body cleaving onto his through the dark hours, even if it did mean too many arms and legs in one bed). Get him wet and he'll melt into the shape of one hefty fine in the form of that parking ticket Enos is itching to give them. And Luke just happens to know, they haven't got a penny to their shared name.

"This car might need a bath, but I don't," is what he tells Bo. Because fun is fun, but suggesting that the General's at risk for stalling is only tempting fate and will only force Bo into an attempt at proving Luke wrong. So he attempts to talk Enos out of the chase, but the dog's in pursuit of a bone, armed with a moral compulsion and sworn duty to keep streambeds safe for all of Hazzard's drivers.

Luke gets saved from having to swat Bo upside the head for getting them into this mess when his cousin does some dazzling driving to get them back out. Old Humility would be bragging over there in that driver's seat, if he wasn't so busy grinning at how Enos backs down from the chase – then, for good measure, slapping Luke's thigh.

Bo's always been the touchy sort, reckoning Luke's body to be an extension of his own when it comes to reasonable places to rest his hands. But somewhere after about the age of fifteen, limits were drawn for Bo, north and south boundaries which Luke had the right to defend invasions beyond, with physical force if necessary. That excited little slap there, dangerously close as it is to areas Bo's got no business being near, is worthy of a war, if Luke wants to start one.

He doesn't, decides it was accidental, the same kind of accident as the way Luke's body got excited by it. Not enough to be a problem, so he lets it go.

Having lost Enos, Bo's driving aimlessly. Or maybe not – this road leads to that south shore of Hazzard Pond, might as well be known as Duke's Haven, what with how him and Bo come out here, alone or with girls, to skinny dip on any remotely hot day. And oddly, never run into anyone else from Hazzard, though the path out here isn't exactly a secret.

"Hold it, Bo," his mouth – damn smart mouth if you ask him – says, operating without much help from his brain. "Hold on!"

Bo's annoyed and thwarted in his pursuit of – whatever he's pursuing. Luke hasn't got a brain cell that he wants to spare to studying on that. "What?" he snaps.

"Head on up to the grapevine," where there will be plenty of other boys with fast cars doing loops. "We plan to win that rally on Saturday, that's the place to practice." Driving anyway. The south shore of Hazzard Pond might be a good place to practice—

"Well, that's where I was going," Bo announces, but Luke doesn't believe it one bit. Just look at that frustration held there between those eyebrows and in the way that lower lip's pushing up against the top one. Exactly the look he gets whenever Luke has to pull the horny kid away from close dancing with skinny, short and hairy girls each Saturday night.

The explosion, when it comes, doesn't emanate from Bo, and that's a relief. With a little backtracking, they figure out it's some unexplainable electrical failure with an armored truck that Cletus Hogg is driving. Why it's out here in the middle of nowhere to begin with Luke's got no idea. But he's got bigger worries, so he helps Bo put out the fire and save some puny bag of valuable something or other. Just a temporary detour on their way out to drive around the grapevine.

Fun is fun, but only for so long. They go home, because Bo's stomach and Daisy's food have a hot date planned for right about this time. Turns out to be a blind date. Daisy's changed out partners from a beautiful pork chop to sowbelly and beans, and Bo nearly gets himself killed for pointing out the bait and switch.

Between Jesse and Rosco, Bo's hide gets spared for another few minutes, anyway. Takes awhile to recognize the entirety of Rosco's involvement in the diversion, but in the end, it's nothing that hasn't happened before and that won't happen again a hundred times. Sometime when they were out playing tag with Enos (when Bo was playing tag with Luke's thigh) or pulling Cletus' copious fat out of the fire, or just maybe when they made it to the relative safety of the grapevine, they got set up. Money everywhere and none for bail. And Dukes surrounded by the law.

His eyes seek out Bo's – Enos reckons to make up for his losses in this morning's chase by catching a Duke boy in his silver bracelets now. Fortunately, his cousin's tuned into the right wavelength, his moonshiner instincts overcoming whatever static normally crackles through that blonde brain. (Luke would say the static came fully equipped with a pair of tits, but the unnatural warmth that still clings to his thigh argues a completely different point.)

A little nod and Enos winds up with nothing but chair, and the Duke boys are back out on the run. The morning on repeat setting, same cars chasing and Bo outdriving Enos. This time that's not enough, and Luke has to outsmart the deputy too, by spending some quiet time with Bo in a haystack. Fun is fun, but they've got to get back out into the light, quick before Bo's hand's get itchy for some thigh-touching (and if that spot of Luke's jeans feels unaccountably chilled by the lack of contact, he's not going to dwell to hard on it). It's a pleasure to get back out into the sun and a relief to pull into the alley that parallels Hazzard Square, then bail out of the General's tight quarters. Damn car is too small for him and Bo both.

Under the tarp, waiting for Cooter to get done dawdling time away out in the open where Bo's blonde hair would act like a beacon to all law enforcement, that's not the improvement Luke hoped for. Spares himself a wish about how he should have brought the checkerboard, because Bo's idle hands under the tarp could lead to—

And there's Cooter, not a moment too soon. Takes a couple of noises, then finally a full-out visual representation of themselves before their friend catches on.

"What was y'all doing under the tarp?" Oh, Cooter's on their side, even if the law has never fully figured that out. He's just slower than average, what with the brain damage from a carefully constructed lifetime cocktail of moonshine and car exhaust.

Bo's quick on that trigger. "Just hiding." Sounds almost like denial to Luke. _I wasn't feeling Luke up, if that's what you're asking. Fun is fun and all, but… _Must be that bedroom hair Bo's got going on, makes Luke's mind trip over itself from one stupid thought to the next.

"You know, I kinda figured that one out." Well, that means it's going to be a good day so far as Cooter goes. Must still be sober. "What was you hiding from?"

Now that there is a loaded question.

Bo's response is premature again, giving Cooter his choice of the obvious, and leaving Luke to think about what he's not admitting. "Well you can take your pick. It's either A, Rosco, B, Boss, C, the armored car company—"

"Or D, all of the above."

This illuminating discussion gets interrupted by the arrival of Rosco. Back under the tarp with touchy-feely.

And from there it's all brain work. Boss and Rosco are up to something, and sneaking around after them is more important than whatever Luke thinks Bo is thinking. Out to the coffin works, where Boss's car is gleaming (and his driver's napping) in the sun. They'll have to get in to know what's going on, and the front door's a bit too obvious. Luke grabs a rope so they can haul themselves up to take the high road.

Of course, he makes it up just fine, but Bo's not exactly a climber. Between Luke's hauling and Bo's thrashing (and just maybe Cooter's truck is not the place to find sturdy climbing gear) the rope snaps.

There's a frozen second, then Bo lunges toward Luke with all the faith in the world that he'll be caught. Lucky for them both, he is, but that's the easy part. Boy's been eating too much sowbelly, makes it hard to haul him up. If Luke grabs him by the thigh, almost exactly the same location where Bo got a little too familiar with him this morning, well it's only the save the kid's neck. Fun is fun, and Luke likes fun as much as the next guy, but not when someone's neck is on the line.

"Thanks," Bo says, so long after the fact that Luke's almost forgotten what it refers to (even if his body's stuck on the memory).

'You owe me one." It's important to keep tally of these things. When the time comes for more thigh touching, it's Bo's turn.

And just like in childhood games, Bo takes his turn with all seriousness and every intention of winning. It's a couple of hours later, in their own kitchen, in front of Jesse, Daisy, and the kitchen sink. They're both half dressed when Bo swats Luke on the back, low. He finds skin where Luke's shirt should be, and might just catch the waist of Luke's jeans. Yeah. That's it then. War's been declared.

They've got a plan, one they made driving back home from the coffin works. It changes only slightly as they reveal it to Jesse. Armored car companies and cash and—

"If you was to tell them to meet us at the town square, at say, uh… three o'clock so we could give them their money back—"

Jesse's got objections, but it's that look on Bo's face that makes Luke speed the explaining part along. He doesn't need his cousin asking out loud about why three o'clock when last he knew it was going to be two.

The rushing works. They're out in the car before Bo gets a chance to ask.

"We're going back to Cooter's," Luke explains.

"Well, I figured that," Bo snaps. Good, he's getting into the right mood now. "Why are we spending an extra hour there?"

"We ain't done hiding under the tarp," is plenty of answer, as far as Luke's concerned.

"What are we hiding from?" But Bo knows, it's starting to curl there at the corner of his mouth.

"You can take your pick. It's either A, Rosco, B, Boss, C, the prying eyes of Hazzard—"

"Or D, all of the above." Yeah, Bo's on that right wavelength again.

Takes some extra diligence to get themselves to the tarp right under Cooter's nose, but Bo's up to it. And there in the dark, where their fingers do the exploring they've clearly been itching for, well Bo's up for that, too. So up for it, in fact, that Luke's over-budgeted their time. Gave them an hour when they only needed a few minutes.

But that's okay. Afterthought though it is, he and Bo discover other things, where hands are secondary and lips come first. Sweet and quiet and gentle, and it's going to take every bit of will power between them to come back out from under this here tarp and keep themselves out of prison so they'll have half a chance of doing this again tomorrow.


End file.
